Sidecar (34 page)

Joe turned and ran toward him and then stood still while Casey
dropped his duffel mid-run and climbed Joe like a tree, throwing
himself into Joe’s arms, where Joe had needed him for the past two months.

Casey lowered his mouth to Joe’s, and the kiss went on—could have gone on forever, but Joe caught some nasty comments from the people around them. He and Casey were usually pretty low-key in public, but not now. Now, the whole rest of the world could go fuck itself—Joe had Casey back. The world was perfect.

Alvin and Wendy were having a similar reunion, and then Casey and Alvin babbled over each other as they walked downstairs to the carousels to retrieve their luggage. Then they took that surprising step out into the sultry Sacramento night, crossed the throughway at the crosswalk, and headed for short-term parking.

When they got to the parking lot, Casey and Alvin stopped babbling about the crazy thing that had happened to them at a London pub, and looked at each other, sort of at a loss.

“God,” Alvin said, smiling, “that was fuckin’ real!”

The two of them hugged fiercely, in spite of Alvin’s
really
uncomfortable-looking sunburn, and Alvin said he’d probably be back up in his little cottage in two days, and then he and Wendy disappeared, giggling, into the parking lot space while Joe took Casey toward the car.

Which was not the car Casey remembered.

“This isn’t my Taurus!”

“No, Casey, a Volvo is not a Taurus,” Joe said dryly, and Casey looked at him.

“A Volvo! How am I supposed to pay for a Volvo!”

Joe shrugged. “Well, I assumed you were going to get one of those job offers lying on the kitchen table.”

“I’ve got job offers?” Casey looked dazed.

“Yeah. It seems all that college fair stuff you did before you left paid off.”

“From Hewlett-Packard? From Intel? From Silicon Valley?”

“Yes.” Joe smiled. So much to tell, so very few words.

“
All
of them?” Casey asked, flabbergasted, and Joe grinned widely.

“Yes!”

“But why a Volvo?”

Joe had used the little door-clicker to unlock the thing, and he and Casey swung their stuff into the trunk. Joe slammed the trunk and looked at him, his smile so real it hurt. “Because it’s got one of the highest safety ratings of any car out there, and Levi’s coming home in less than a month, and it matters.”

Casey didn’t climb him like a tree this time. He cuddled into his Joe’s arms and cried until he hiccupped. Joe just held him, eyes closed, in the parking lot of Sacramento International, and let him. There was nothing else to do, no one else to be but the man who held Casey and let him be relieved and overjoyed.

Casey and Alvin had been flying for nearly thirty-six hours. Casey might have wanted to talk all night, but he got into the car and promptly fell asleep. Joe was able to wake him up when they’d gotten home, and he managed to stumble into the house and into the shower while Joe was bringing the luggage up, but Joe put the dogs to bed. Hi really had been grieving himself to death, so Joe had gone out and bought a big mongrel mix puppy that he’d been calling Jonesy because he’d liked
The
Hunt For Red October
, and for no other reason. When they were sleeping (Jonesy chewing on Hi’s ear and Hi patiently letting him) he started the first load of laundry from Casey’s big suitcase. While that was working, he went upstairs to climb into bed and hold him, sweeping his hand in slow strokes down Casey’s bare back as he slept.

For the first time, Joe contemplated their age difference and was grateful. Casey might have to endure some hellish years after Joe passed on, but Joe would
never
have to be separated from Casey again. It was okay; Casey was tough. Casey would survive, watch Levi raise a family, play with grandkids. Joe didn’t think he’d make it if he couldn’t see Casey for another two months. He’d be like Hi, fit to grieve himself to death, except it would take more than a puppy and patrolling the property against evil rabbits and squirrels to make him start eating again.

So Joe just lay there and held him and quietly, sincerely, thanked God.

T
HE
next morning, Joe was up and showered and doing things like washing the laundry and feeding the cats when Casey apparently popped up like a jack-in-the-box and came scrambling down the stairs.

“Where’s Rufus?” he asked, looking adorable with his hair sticking out all over his head and his briefs twisted around his body.

“What?”

Casey squinted at him, opened and closed his eyes, and said, “Where’s Rufus? I… I don’t remember seeing him last night. Where is he?”

Joe sighed. He’d been hoping to put some of this off at least until Casey’d had breakfast. “Go put some clothes on, baby,” he said quietly. “I’ve got something to show you.”

It was warm, even in the morning, so Casey came back down in his old cut-off jeans and a T-shirt and a pair of flip-flops, none of which would have made the cut to travel. He looked almost exactly like he had when Joe had taken him to Sugar Pine when he’d been in high school, and Joe quirked up a corner of his mouth under his mustache. He wasn’t that boy anymore, never would be again, and as grateful as Joe was for knowing that boy, he was even more grateful for having the man in his life.

“C’mon,” he said quietly, standing at the doorway and holding out his hand. “C’mon. There’s something I need you to see.”

It was a little chilly in the shadow of the pines and cedars, and Joe’s house was in a valley, which meant they were almost always in shade. Joe liked his little valley, this hole in an increasingly busy world. Yeah, he’d gotten the satellite so they could have decent television, and he was going to subscribe to DSL as soon as the station got up this way because Casey needed it if he was going to stay up on technology, but mostly? He was content here, and some of his nicest, most peaceful moments came when he was standing on the red earth and looking up past the tree spires to the blue sky. If he were a man of words, he could have written poetry for that, but as it was, he just liked to raise his face to the heavens and let his heart fly.

Maybe he’d do that today, but for the moment, he kept his eyes on the ground as he and Casey picked their way back toward the heart of the property, to a place where Casey had once brought a sleeping bag so he could lay out under the stars to sleep because it was too hot in the house. Joe had cleared out the brush and leveled it a little, but mostly, it was the same forest clutter underfoot—slivers of wood, twigs, and fallen leaves from the oak trees and needles from the pine.

At the base of a truly spectacular Joshua pine, the fragrant kind with the bark that looked like round-ended puzzle pieces, were the two small monuments. Joe paused for a second and heard Casey go, “Aww,” as he saw Seth’s to the left, and then “No. No. Geez, Joe, why didn’t you tell me?”

Joe shook his head and looked down into those familiar gray eyes, which were growing bright and shiny and almost spilling over. “If he’d been sick, that would’ve been one thing,” he said truthfully. “But one morning, Hi got up and he didn’t.”

Hi, who had followed them out there, heard his name and woofed, pushing his head under Casey’s hand for some long-overdue affection. Casey turned and squatted, gave the dog a hug, and got his face licked, and then Jonesy, the motley puppy with his mismatched coat of black, brown, and gray blotches in medium-length hair, came and licked Casey’s face too.

“I was going to wait for you to get back to get another dog,” Joe explained guiltily, “but he wasn’t going to make it, Casey. He was going to grieve himself to death, and I thought that would be worse.”

Casey kept petting, getting to know the puppy, reacquainting himself with the dog, but the bend of his neck, the curve of his shoulders, were studies in hurt. “You could have told me,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Joe said, “I could have. But I already knew what it felt like to grieve all alone, Casey. I thought I’d wait until you got home and let you grieve with company.”

Casey stood up and launched himself into Joe’s arms, bitching the whole time. “That’s a real shitty philosophy, you know that? Because that left you here alone with no one to cry on, and it was so pointless—”

“Was not,” grumbled Joe. “Man, that phone call? The one from Pisa? With Paolo? That was fuckin’ awesome. I’d have sent you twice to get one of those.”

“You didn’t have to send me once!” Casey accused, glaring up at him with a face blotchy and stained with tears.

“No,” Joe admitted. “I didn’t. But you need to be glad you went, because it’s the last place you go somewhere without me, that’s for damned sure.”

“Promise?”

Joe nodded.

“I need to hear you say it, Josiah, because the thought of you here alone, doing this, fucking kills me. You’ve got to promise—it’s the two of us, right? We’re gonna be a fuckin’ team. If you think I’m not scared of bringing a baby home, you’re dead wrong. I can’t do it if you’re going to be all ‘Joe is an island.’ I’ve got to be a partner, Josiah. It just can’t work the other way.”

Joe nodded, swallowing hard. “I promise,” he said, his voice gruff and nearly broken. “I promise. There’s some shit a man shouldn’t do alone. This place right here, that’s one of ’em.”

“What’s another?” Casey asked, still suspicious, and Joe managed a little smile.

“Go through life, period, the end. Are you done here, or do you need some more time?”

“I’ll come back later,” Casey said regretfully. “I’m too pissed at you still to do this place justice.”

“Fair enough. C’mon. There’s something else I want to show you.” Joe grabbed his hand again, and they turned back around.

“Did you change the furniture?” Casey asked suspiciously. “Because that would be okay with me. That couch is getting old and fucking ratty.”

“We can get a new one when we get the baby stuff and turn your old room into a nursery,” Joe said. “But no.”

“The bathroom looked the same.” Casey pondered. “Did you finally get DSL?”

“No, I told you there’s no station in the foothills, okay? Wait a few years; we’ll get it when it gets here! It’s not in the house!”

“Okay, so why are we going back to the house?”

“We’re not. We’re going back to the garage, and you’re being a punk, so stop it.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t had sex for two months. It’s starting to grate on me.”

Joe turned around and glared at him. “Well neither have I, and I’m about to rip your fool head off. Give it a rest, will ya? We’re almost there.”

The carport still held Casey’s car (the green Volvo now, not the white Taurus—it was still strange seeing it there, and probably stranger still for Casey), but the garage had been cleared out of all the building supplies since the mother-in-law cottage was built. Nothing but space, free and clear. Joe let the feral cats sleep there, and kept all of his tools and camping equipment, but there was still room for the motorcycle, so he’d been parking the thing there for the last couple of years.

But he’d had to clear a space for the thing next to it.

“Oh. My.
God!
” Casey looked at the attachment to the motorcycle, and then turned to Joe, and then looked at it again. “Joe! What did you do to the Harley?”

Joe looked at the sidecar with justifiable pride. “I made it a motorcycle built for two.”

He’d never let Casey learn to ride. They were too dangerous, he’d worry too much, and that was that. But the Volvo was a family car, and the motorcycle was built for one. He needed his man by his side.

Casey ran his hand over the sturdy metal frame. The thing was homemade—it had a modified chassis from a Yugo and the single wheel from a smaller motorcycle. Joe had cut down the interior from a Volkswagen Rabbit for the shell and installed the back bench seat from the same car. In general, the thing was a hodgepodge of various vehicles, but it was welded, soldered, and electrically connected to Joe’s Harley—it could be disconnected or connected with about five minutes’ worth of work with a horizontal tow bar arrangement and a plug in so the lights would run off the motorcycle’s battery. It was as safe as such a thing could be—and it even had a seatbelt and a roll bar.

“I had to modify the Harley,” Joe said, trying to explain. “It was giving out too much noise and exhaust—I changed up the carburetor and replaced the exhaust manifold so the exhaust comes out on the other side, and it’s not so loud. There’s even a Plexiglas shield between you and the bike—no heat, no exhaust, or at least less of it. It should be okay.”

Casey turned to him, his eyes shiny again but all of the recrimination gone
. “But why?”

“Because a man shouldn’t go through life alone,” Joe said simply. “And you’re too big to be riding on the bitch seat all the time.”

And there it was, another armload of Casey, this one warm and wonderful and not angry at all. “I’ll still ride the bitch seat sometimes, you know that, right?” he whispered, and Joe shuddered and held him closer, because he wasn’t just talking about the back seat of a motorcycle. He was talking about being Casey—challenging, feisty, smart, and strong, and not letting Joe get away with jack shit and not settling for anything less than full partnership, even in this big scary thing they were about to do.

“I wouldn’t love you any other way.”

Epilogue

Paradise

~Casey

2011

A
USTIN
was almost asleep by the time Joe pulled up into the garage. He’d wolfed down the sandwich and the leftover hamburger—sleep was only natural, and Casey knew from experience that the vibrations from the sidecar, that low to the ground, could be incredibly peaceful. Unless you were Levi, because every time Joe took
him
in the sidecar, he threw up.

Casey went into the guest room and got sweats and a T-shirt out of the drawers. After Levi had thrived so well in his first few years, Roy Petty had pulled some strings. They were certified emergency foster parents now—there were all sorts of sizes of things in there for just such an emergency.